Brant -- ARIans have defrauded the entire Randian record: diaries, letters, Q and As, old audio tapes, new videos, general historical documents, etc. And that's just the stuff we know about! I guarantee you Peikoff and company have altered and destroyed a lot of priceless historical material we haven't yet found out about. Many of the sacred items are gone forever. The personal depravity of Peikoff, Schwartz, Binswanger, etc. is beyond words. And they did all this, not based on foolish personal convictions, or because their pitiful brains are too small to understand the issues involved. They did all this remorseless evil with deliberate calculation.

I can't endorse your estimation of Peikoff, Kyrel, unless that man was highly pissed off at Rand and for more than one reason. This is quite possibly true, but one would have to get into his head to actually know that. Personally, I think he's under-educated and under-brained for his life and personal circumstances. And I think Rand was under-educated too, but over-brained and made the most of it. The education I'm referring to is the broad liberal arts education that used to be common, say in the 19th C., and now hardly exists any more. Note that Peikoff didn't get blown off like some significant others during the break of '68 and didn't have to get his own life. He got stuck on Rand like she was a tar baby. Regardless, I can't call it evil. That would float it all right back to Rand herself.

Brant -- You're so right. What's tragic and outrageous about all the corrupted and unreliable Rand material and documents is that so, so much of it greatly supplements her published material (over which she had control, and thus is very reliable) and adds to her ability to move and uplift the world. But it's simply untrustworthy. So the ARIans and other Randroids, with their dishonest activity, are just devastating the planet.

And so are all the other "Objectivists" who see this terrible evil and then turn away or remain silent. Rand called it the sin of EVASION. Her diaries, letters, Q and A transcripts, unpublished fiction, private notes, video lectures, radio interviews, etc. are hugely valuable. But they're mostly under the control of raw evil and, as such, what she really says there is unknowable.

(If Peikoff had any human decency, he'd transfer control of all those documents to myself, who would immediately make them available to all even semi-serious scholars, and the like. I'd put a lot of them online the next day.)

Peikoff, Schwartz, Binswanger, Berliner, etc. are all vermin who are doing this with essentially full knowledge of their evil acts. They don't in any serious hold a different opinion from Kelley and Hicks, honestly believing that religiosity and cultism represent Rand at her truest and best, and thus their acts of cultism and fraud are actually acts of loyalty and virtue. They just barely think this. And, yes, I can read their (empty) minds (and black souls) with full and unnerving accuracy. Mostly, these Randroid cultists are exactly like the Scientologists and all other cultists in existence: they know pretty much exactly what they're doing.

Those books are worthless for Rand scholarship. The cultism is simply a no goer, now a dead end. The books are almost unreadable by anyone like myself with first hand experience with Objectivism and Objectivists going back to the 1960s. I saw them in action in New York City. I went to the Ford Hall Forum in Boston every year from 1968 to 1974. I saw Peikoff, the Brandens, Rand et al. in action on the stage at The Empire State Building in 1968 pre-break. Then I saw and experienced them in various venues and places. As for omitted material in "The Letters," did the omitter use "[..............]"?

As an addendum I have to say Frank O'Connor was much more a man in that context than a victim of his wife. I remember his powerful stride in the hall at the FHF going to meet up with Ayn after one of her appearances there in the early 1970s. There's been too much put out about poor Frank O'Connor.

Neil -- When it comes to these 13 new letters, and everything else, I trust the Randroids not a jot. They're religious cultists. Their record of lying is unbroken. And not a single cult traitor to Rand has apologized for the dishonest acts of any other cult traitor since her death. So they're all in it together, and they're all still involved in a vast conspiracy of fraud. Think of it: THIRTY FIVE YEARS with only a single objective scholar having brief, controlled access to the records. Even Kant and Hegel weren't as intellectually dishonest and depraved as Peikoff, Schwartz, Binswanger, Berliner, etc.

Neil -- Really? I thought all the books from the cultists were frauds. How is it possible that a Randroid book from 22 years ago contains true material from Ayn Rand which isn't heavily "edited"? That makes no sense. Why would Peikoff, Schwartz, Binswanger, and the others allow this?

I hope to hell Michael Berliner doesn't lie as much this time as he did 22 years ago. When he published his shamefully fraudulent book of Ayn Rand's letters in 1995 the Objectivist community was very different. A lot of the cultism and religiosity has now died out. People today much more want the truth. I hope this pitiful cultist scumbag doesn't "edit" the 13 new letters as much as he did all the previous ones.

Here is the one letter which you can (in part) read if you don't have a subscription:

_______________

November 27, 1932

Dear Mrs. Lipton:

I was very, very happy to hear from you. Please forgive me for delaying my answer for such a long time. I have lots to tell you.

I have written to Mrs. Stone [another Chicago relative] several times, but I did not get any answer. I do hope the family isn’t angry at me for something. I hope you don’t think I am terribly ungrateful. I have not forgotten all that the family has done for me—nor will I ever forget it. I also remember that I owe a big debt—and I think I’ll soon be able to begin to repay it. I think—and hope—that I’m going to get on my feet now.

I’ve had a pretty hard time. However, I shouldn’t complain, for I have had a job all through this depression. That newspaper article you sent me just about covers all the essential news about me—except that they didn’t get straight the story about how I met Cecil DeMille. They had that wrong. But I did work in the wardrobe at RKO—for over three years. It was not a bad job—not sewing (for I still can’t sew a stitch), but in the wardrobe office. I wasn’t getting very much money—but enough to carry on. . . .

______________

I recall that in Anne Heller's biography it was reported that the Stones thought Rand was ungrateful.

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